Welcome to the podcast of the White Church in Adelaide, South
Australia. Keep.
Praying for the guys that are still in South Africa.
So Dave and Hilary are going to be flying back.
I think it's Wednesday or Thursday.
They're going to enjoy some time as a family at a game park.
So for those of you who haven't been to South Africa, that
literally means just, it's not like games, it's like counting
the children to make sure they leave because it's like where
there's wild animals, so wild lions, wild elephants and stuff
like that. So they're going to a place
called Pillensburg, which is a pretty cool place with swimming
pools and there's stuff. So it's a bit of a resorty, but
it's also wild animals. So be praying for them for a
refreshing time. Dan and Chantel are to church
this morning. Yeah, 7 hours behind this
morning and then they'll be flying back tonight.
So pray for their travels as well.
Thank you for looking after my wife and my kids.
I really did appreciate it. Guys, it's so hard, but I want
to encourage you guys as well. So you know how we gathered just
before we all flew out and we just asked what, what are we
feeling God would do? And what I was encouraged is we
had words like it's time and that is being handed over and
stuff like that. And you know, we get to the
Global Equip and the second session, somebody stands up in
the title of the message, it's time.
And we're just like, sheesh. And then a couple of sessions
later, somebody's like, man, I feel like battens are being
handed over. A little church in Adelaide,
Australia. Hearing the voice of God.
That's not just happening here, but happening globally.
I tell you, isn't that amazing? Just like God would Global, God
would speak to a little church in Adelaide and said, this is
what I want to do, not just here, but what I'm doing around
the world. So I want to encourage you guys
like let's, let's lean into the voice of God because he's
speaking to us not just for our context, but actually globally.
And that's awesome. So the prayers we pray, we pray
for us, we pray for them, which is super cool.
And something else that we shared and was a guy got up
called Leo. Many of us may know of Leo.
He leads a church in Sydney in GGC Glorious Gospel Church.
And he actually spoke about multiplication, which is a
really cool word, but he reflected on something that I'm
going to share this morning. And that was that we had, as I
said, over 5000 people. There was 34 nations
represented. And NCML and New Covenant
Ministries International has been going for 45 years, which I
didn't realize, but it started with a group of just a few men
getting together and saying, what does the Bible say of how
we should do church? And 45 years later, that group
of men multiplied and is now working into hundreds of nations
around the world. Countless people are being
saved. Churches have been planted,
nations have been taken for the gospel.
And I say all that to say that we're Dudley's going to be
sharing this morning. And he was one of those original
men in that small group that just went, what does the Bible
say? And then multiplied and
multiplied and multiplied and multiplied.
So I'd encourage this this morning, just open your hearts
because this is just not just somebody, our church, but
somebody who has really committed to just, hey, what
does the Bible teach? And we've seen incredible fruit
over 45 years around the globe. And so it's an incredible
privilege to have him share this morning.
So would you come up, Dudley? Father, we thank you for this
gift that you've placed in our church.
We thank you for the words that you've spoken to him.
You've shared upon him the gifting that you've put upon his
life, not just impact us here, but the lasting fruit around the
globe. We just pray just the word that
you've given him for us this morning would bear fruit in our
hearts just as it has borne fruit over the last 45 years
around the world. We thank you in Jesus name,
Amen. Amen.
Thank you. It's always a privilege to share
the word of God anywhere in the world with any group of people.
But for us, this is our home church.
And it's. Yeah, it's like a double
privilege as far as I'm concerned.
Just excuse my throat. I'm not sick anymore.
I was last weekend and I'm still just getting over the clearing
of my chest. So I'm going to have to use this
mic and sometimes sound like I'm shouting when my voice gets a
little lower. I don't have the strongest voice
anymore. Age catches up with you and
changes lots of things, but I felt like I just need to say to
you before we start this morning that this church is a very
precious church to God, Very special people.
I don't know that we know that as deeply as God feels His love
for us, most of us have walked a long, long road with God.
Some of us it's a little shorter, but God has been
faithful to every one of us at every level, all the time, no
matter what. We've blown it.
We've been in victory, we've been in defeat, we've been
strong, we've been weak, But God has never changed, and His love
never changes. It's a wonderful thing to know
that nothing in all the world, not even sin, if it's just
simply confessed, nothing can separate us from His love, the
love of God, which is in Jesus Christ our Lord.
Nothing. Sometimes we come and we feel
like we've blown it even sometimes on the way to the
meeting and therefore we feel we're unworthy.
Let me just clear something up for all of us.
Again, you all know this, but let me clear it up for you.
You'll never be worthy and nor will I.
There was only one and that was Jesus and because of His
worthiness, God would just wants to keep pouring love and life
into us all. So I'm going to pick up this
morning from something Justin was sharing the scripture he
used anyway just before he left and not I think it was a Sunday
before he left and it's found in Ephesians chapter 3 and verse
10. If you'll just turn with me now,
I did give my scriptures to Hillary and somehow or the
other, those scriptures have not got to Peter today for him to be
able to be ahead of us. So I'm going to have to ask you
to turn in some of the scriptures If when I'll give
them if he hasn't got them up quick enough.
We're going to have to take a little more time looking up in
our Bibles. If you can get them up quick
enough. He's a better man than I than I
am. All right, Ephesians chapter 3
before we read it. And from verse 10, we're going
to read to the 13th verse when we're trying to train people
that can be our kids, people in the workplace, whatever it is.
So often we share with them the what they should do, the how
they should do it, when they should do it, where they should
do it, etcetera. But we very often forget to tell
them the why. Why should you do what I'm going
to tell you, where I tell you, etcetera, etcetera.
Even telling, bringing up our kids and so many of us as
preachers, that's our problem as well.
We tell people what to do. We tell them what the Bible
tells them they need to do what God says.
But very often we we neglect to tell them why.
And that's what we want to look at this morning.
And so if you'll turn with me, if you have your Bibles open and
I don't appear, you've got it up there.
God's intention. This is what you were preaching
just before you left. His intention was that now
that's today forever. That now is tomorrow.
When we get tomorrow, that's now.
It was now when it was written 2000 years ago.
God lives in the eternal now. God is not a time space
creature, we are God. What happened 10,000 years ago
is as if it were happening right now.
And if Jesus were to tarry long enough, if it was 10,000 years
to come, which I doubt could ever happen, it's just God
doesn't see that as future. It's now for God.
He lives in the eternal now. So all of his truth is the
eternal now. All he's promised is now
everything. And so his intention was that
through the church, that's us. That's the strongest believer on
planet Earth, and that's the weakest believer on planet
earth. If we've trusted Christ, we are
part of the church. Even if we want to cut ourselves
off from the church, we still remain part of his body.
We can sulk, we can stay away, we can do what we like.
We can strictly ignore people. Whatever we're we're still part
of the church. I want that to sink in.
Don't think because you sulk or do whatever you do, you're no
longer one of us. And don't think because you've
done something wrong against one of us, that you no longer one of
us, you with me. And what was his intention was
that the manifold wisdom of God should be made known to the
rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms.
That's the demon powers. Satan knows he's defeated.
He's like a roaring lion, but he has lost his teeth.
He can still bite and hurt just from the strength of his jaw,
like a lion with our teeth, but he can't RIP us apart.
He knows he's beaten. He knows this Bible better than
most of us. He knows what God intention is.
But the problem is that it only is.
It's only going to be through the church.
It's not that just because it's written in the Bible.
It's through the church that the manifold wisdom of God is going
to be made known to these real principalities of these
authorities in the heavenly realms.
If we could go to the next verse please, according to his eternal
purpose, which he accomplished in Christ Jesus our Lord next
verse please in Him and through faith in him we may approach God
with freedom and confidence. You know that Jesus done done.
We're going to carry on with that.
Jesus actually said this so we he invites us.
He says come boldly, boldly, not cringingly.
Isn't that a wonderful thing? I'm going to finish that the
verse that I'm starting to quote, but isn't it wonderful to
think God, I've just sinned so badly right that very moment,
but I can get off and get on my knees and come boldly don't even
have to come cringing the oh God, I'm a Richard man.
I can come boldly knowing I am that, but I can approach that
throne of grace every time I need it to obtain mercy and help
every time I have need. That's what the scripture says.
I hope these things just well, not just here, they're here
moving to the next verse 3. We can approach God with and I
ask you therefore not to be discouraged because of my
sufferings for you, which are your glory.
Now the subject I want to cover this morning is why the reason
why we come to church, church meetings, we call it come to
church. We are the church.
We can't come to ourselves. We come to meet.
Why do we come to meet? And most of us have been around
for a long time and so many of us, if not all of us have known
some of these things that I'm going to share with you.
The why. But sometimes, through just
life's pressures, all the things that come upon us, the demands,
the conflicts, things that are said lightheartedly or said to
hurt, whatever, all these things are making an impression upon
us. You sit and watch the TV.
Everything you see there is making an impact upon your life.
And all those things are geared by the devil to discourage you,
to make you feel disqualified. Just think about it.
Why then do we come to meet these to meet on a Sunday?
And I'm going to be speaking primarily on a Sunday.
Our Sunday meeting, that's the first day of the week, was when
the Church of the New Testament actually met.
Not on the Sabbath, on the on the Sunday.
We are not Sabbatarians. It's the Lord's Day.
It's a special day. This is the day that the Lord
has made. It's every day, but he set aside
one day for us to worship and he says that some have, some will
worship other days than we do, but there has to be a day when
the church gets together. And in this country, by and
large, this is the day we do it, the first day of the week.
So why do we do this? In order to for me to try and
answer that, I want to just say that each one of us has to grasp
afresh this morning that there are a number of reasons why
people have descended into, I'm going to use that word, if you
don't mind me, descended into the reason why they come to
church. That's the first thing.
And the second thing is, if we're going to understand why we
need to come together and meet together on a Sunday like we do,
we need to understand what the Bible says we should be doing
and weigh it up with what we are doing.
Are you with me? So the first one is what are
these models, these examples that people began to set that
have now made? This is how church is done in
different places. And I've got a number of them
here. I think it's 8 or 9 very
quickly. Some of them I've shared with
people before, some of you will have heard some of them.
The first one is this, people have developed this kind of
strategy, this model, this modus operandi.
First one is what I call the pastoral church.
And everyone of you know that you want to be pastored you
because pastoring past being pastored is being cared for.
And we all want to be cared for. And God has appointed pastors to
pastor us, but He's also appointed us to care for one
another. If you read through Ezekiel 34
and some of those Old Testament things about the sheep and the
shepherds, you see that sheep should not be butting one
another, hurting one another. They should be caring for one
another. So we've developed a caring
model. That's good in a sense, but it's
in itself it's inadequate. And so many churches are just
pastoral. I come to the meeting, I want to
be cared for. I want everybody to fuss all
over me. It just gets worse and worse and
worse. And you understand this, that we
move from it being hymn centered to us centered.
And so many churches, that's what it's about.
They come to a meeting, they go home and say I did not get my
needs met. It's all about me.
I just want to say this very quickly, then I'll move to the
second one. No matter how bad the preacher
preaches and how things go in the meeting, if you believe in
the love of God, God will care for your needs.
I remember up in Zimbabwe once I went to a church up in Kariba,
like Kariba was the only church he was and I was we were not
preaching that Sunday morning, we're preaching Sunday night.
I went to this meeting and this man got up in all these robes
and garments and all the candles were burning and everything was
going on. And I don't know what he was
preaching about. He outside of the fact that he
said he used that scripture that who our names are engraved on
the palms of God's hands. God so ministered so deeply to
me that man did not know Christ. He didn't know Christ, but I got
deeply ministered to. Why?
Because you go to church at meetings knowing that this is
what God wants us to do and he'll meet our needs.
But we should never make that the reason why we go to church.
That's just part of the blessing that comes with doing what God
says. All right, Second one is that
people like the priestly kind of type of church where everybody
gets a chance to play their part, say what they want to, to
be heard. And their church is just like
that. Some of them started off really
well when they believed in the priesthood of all ministries, of
all the priests, of all believers.
But slowly but surely it degenerated until we begin to
give stories about ourselves, made it all about us, our needs,
get the focus on us instead of Him.
And that's the priestly church and their churches like that all
over. When I get a chance, I'm going
to jump in and say what I want to say, whether they like it or
not. Whether the problem is that even
sometimes when we speak about the gifts of the Spirit, some of
those gifts or what what is said to be gifts have no valid reason
for having been expressed in that meeting.
But we act like God spoke. And so eventually we just
descend into this priestly church.
The third one is the preaching church.
And so many people starts off well, we love the word of God,
but then we want to hear from a man or a woman who can, who's
really got the gift of the gab that excites us that no, I mean,
sometimes I've, I've been in meetings where I, I've just been
astounded, flabbergasted by the, the man's or woman's gift of the
God, the way they can pronounce things and say things, but I
don't know what they're actually saying.
Just wow. And so you find these huge
churches around the world that when that preacher leaves,
people just dissipate and gone was just a preaching center.
It wasn't a church. And all of us want to hear the
word of God, but we want to hear it under the anointing of the
Spirit of God. We want to hear it where God
gives revelation. It's not just how well can you
communicate. And their churches like that all
over the world, Some of them are in the 10s of thousands because
of the preacher, not because of it being a church.
It's just a gathering point #4 people that I call it the
praying church, people who like to pray, they only want to pray.
There's not enough prayer in this church, so I'm leaving.
People say we need to pray more, and I've essentially what that
wild prayer is. It is absolutely essential.
In the end, what it degenerates into is why aren't you praying
for me? There needs to be more prayer
about me. And so it moves from Christ
centered slowly but surely. None of none of this is
intentional until it becomes all about me again.
Praying churches. Now all of those things are good
and needed in the church, but in themselves they're not enough.
Then firstly there's the praise churches and these are the
people who want super bands, musicians, professional singers.
They want everything to just go well.
I want to get excited by the music and I just want to sing
song after song after song after song.
And it doesn't. It's not coming from here.
It's the band. I mean, I watched the mosh, but
you know that. Well, I can't do it anymore with
them. I'm sorry.
I'm still. But all this bouncing up and
down, that is just what happens in all the Worldly Raves
gatherings when superstars are trying to excite the people.
Get them going. And then the church brought it
in and so now we bounce around too.
And if we can bounce around enough, and I'm not against
that. I used to bounce around when I
could. I'm a little too old to bounce
now, but I'm just saying that that's what it becomes.
So that if it's not exciting enough for me, I go looking
elsewhere. That's the reason why they come
to church, the praise churches and then we get the presence
churches. They wanting the Holy Spirit to
manifest himself in a way that they want.
And if that doesn't manifest then they go looking for what
elsewhere. That's one of one of the largest
churches around the world is that group of people that move
from 1 so-called presence church to another trying to find this
presence instead of looking at what does the Bible talk about
the presence of God. You know, in the presence of God
there is fullness of joy and joy lusts.
Because if there's a if God's present in the meeting and I
walk out having been touched by God, God's present with me in a
very real way. Anyway.
I don't need the crowd. I don't need certain
manifestations to prove God's present, but they have
prescribed certain manifestations and they're all
over the world today. They're the second largest
church in the world. The largest 1 is what I the next
one I'm going to talk about. It's the phantom church.
What do I mean by phantom church?
It's the church just moves from one place to the other.
It doesn't feel like it's committed to anything.
It doesn't believe in leadership.
It doesn't have to roll up or be faithful at prayer meetings or
anything else. It's just, I just do what I
like, but I love God. We meet when we want to, we do
as we please, etcetera, etcetera.
The phantom church, they are all over the world.
That's the biggest church, the church group that just moves
from one place to another and never settles down and believe.
You see, to me, a group of people meeting two or three
together together in, in, in Christ's name is not a church.
It's a church when you have leadership.
It's a church when we submit and surrender to authority.
If we will not submit and surrender to authority, have
leaders. Godly, God appointed, God chosen
leaders. We're not a church.
We're just a group of people that meet and thank God we do
and we can. We can meet in our homes.
We can meet where we like, but that's not a church.
It can be part of the church. I hope I'm making sense and I'm
not being too hard or harsh. All right.
Then also the number 8. So I think that was the 7th 1.
The 8th 1 is what I call the professional church.
The professional church. What does that mean?
Well, everything is done like it's a business.
We do not do that or help that person because we, our budget
doesn't allow it. You know, when the church's
budget dictates what you get involved in, it's finished.
You might as well pack up because God only responds not to
budgets. He responds to faith, and faith
is the substance of seeing things that have not come about
yet. I hope you get with them.
But the professional church anyway, everything, everything's
excellent. It's got the best of this, the
best of that, all of it's equipment, all of its sound
systems, audio systems, everything is just so
professional. It's all worked out so great.
Nothing ever goes wrong. And then people are just
switched on by that and then we move on quickly to the one that
is biblical and it's called the prophetic Apostolic Church.
And I think if I got it right, David preached on the prophetic
Apostolic to some degree last Sunday.
I wasn't. Yeah, I was sick and, and, and
told me when she got home what happened there.
So the prophetic Apostolic or the Apostolic prophetic?
I've just used prophetic first because I've tried to keep all
those peas because you didn't pick it up.
And I only use alliteration so that you can remember easier.
There's no other reason for it. All right, So it's the prophetic
Apostolic Church and to be prophetic and to be Apostolic,
you've got to be able to see the future, but you've also got to
be be able to become the future. It's now you've seen the future
and not becoming it. The prophetic Apostolic Church.
The word Apostolic means to go, the sent one.
It means you don't stay, you go. Now, having said all of that, I
want to come back to all of that in a moment.
So that's the first thing. If we're going to understand the
why, we got to understand how these other things developed and
why they developed and why people are going to those
meetings, and yet they're so unbiblical.
So the second thing I said is that we've got to understand
what the New Testament teaches should happen in a church
meeting. And I don't know if we can read
all these scriptures. So I'm going to just this is the
New Testament, the Old Testament, and what happens in
heaven when Jesus is on the throne and the angels and the
living creatures and the redeemed and all of the prophets
and the patriarchs and even the apostles all worship with us.
Can you imagine that there's a day coming when Paul, Barnabas,
Timothy, Peter, James, John, Moses, Abraham, David, the king,
all of these people, we're going to see them.
I mean, just imagine you're bumping into this, just walking
through this crowd and hi, hi. How are you going, Paul?
So that's what you look like. I mean, that's serious.
What's going to happen, because it says in the Scriptures, when
Jesus comes back, he's going to take us to be with him.
And when he takes us to be with him, we're going to see him
first of all as he really is. And then you and I are going to
be like him. Can you imagine?
What does that mean? You and I are going to be like
him. Here I am standing up with so
hips. You know, we're getting older.
What? Whatever the case.
And then all I mean, I'm going to just be like Jesus.
He's never been sick. He's never got old.
He's never forgotten a thing. Memory is not part of the
problem for him. We're going to be like him.
Just imagine that. But anyway, let me try and get
back to all of this. So it's going to be, what is the
Old Testament? What is the New Testament?
What is it? The, the redeemed?
What do they do in heaven? Why this is what it is Psalm
149. We will read just that Psalm and
I think many of you know what's in there, but this is what the
Old Testament church, the redeemed of God's people, what
they how they what they even got involved in the trying to answer
the why Psalm. What did I say, 119, 149?
Sorry. I thought maybe Peter had got it
up there and then I wouldn't have to.
It's up there now. Praise the Lord now.
This is this is how the Old Testament gathered.
The Saints. Praise the Lord, Sing the Lord
to the Lord. A new song.
His praise in the assembly of the Saints.
That's those that look towards the cross.
We, the Saints that look back on the cross, they were the ones
that look forward to the cross. They knew that there was a Lamb
that was to be slain. They trusted God for their sins
to be forgiven, even though it was only in part until Jesus
came. But every one of those who died
in the Old Testament that looked forward to the Lamb will be with
us in heaven. So this is how they are.
Praise to the Lord, sing a new song.
What does that mean? That's what should be happening
in our meetings. I don't know about you, but in
my devotional time, I very often just sing my songs, my own
songs, songs that have never been sung before anywhere on the
earth. Do you?
And is it possible that that could happen for us as the
church, so we could start singing those songs?
You just come back from South Africa.
I remember one of the occasions when we were there when while we
were singing and praising God, we heard the sound up in the
rafters of this huge auditorium. And the sound was angels
singing. And then the new songs that just
broke out as a result. Just all over that, the
auditorium, thousands upon thousands.
I don't know that there was one person that wasn't singing a new
song. What I'm trying to say is that's
what God wants to happen when we come to church.
That we that that we come not just to sing the songs, that the
person leading the the music section of our worship time that
they've chosen, but that we sing.
And you see, the church used to do that, but then people began
to sing silly songs and people began to do silly things with
those songs. And so the church clamped down
on that and said you can't do that.
And then it all became microphone, not there, only from
here. And it's a hard thing when the
church gets grows, it's easier while we're small, but as you
grow, it's harder and harder to just let people be free.
But that's what God wants. Again, that was how they worship
God in the Old Testament. And you'll see that's all how
they worship God in the New Testament.
But reading on peace, Psalm 149 again, let Israel rejoice in
their maker. Let the people of Zion and we
the Zion of God today be glad in their king.
That's how they worship. They were glad.
They were glad to be with God's people.
They were glad that God was in their midst.
Reading on, please let them praise his name with.
That's it. Now.
There was a time when I used to be able to jump all around and
dance and carry on. I can't anymore, but I still can
sway. I could, you know, we'll get to
this, hopefully. I don't know that I'll ever get
there. But part of worship is to use
every part of your body, everything to praise God folk.
Is there anyone who cannot do this?
Put your hand up if you can't do this.
You see what's happened right now is I've swept away every
excuse you have as to why you don't.
Every one of us can. And in actual fact, Scripture
says we should lift up holy hands.
God wants us to use our these hands.
I think to my to my understanding from Scripture,
hands are for two things. One is to raise them up before
God and praise and prayer and the other just to discipline
your children. No, the rod hands are to give
love, comfort, encouragement. God doesn't slap people, he
disciplines them. Anyway, I'm getting sidetracked
again. That's my problem as a preacher,
you pick up things in God and then you just, you get
sidetracked. Anyway, let's move on.
Let them back to that scripture, please.
Sorry, verse three. Let them praise His name with
dancing and make music to Him with tambourine and heart.
We can. Musical instruments are there
for God's glory, not for the musician, not even to excite us,
but we want to make everything available, use our whole bodies
and all the gifting to do what? To bring praise to God.
Moving on, please to verse 4. For the Lord takes delight in
his people. He crowns the humble with
salvation. Moving on, please let the Saints
rejoice in this honor and even sing for joy in their on their
beds. I just want to clear up
something here if you don't mind me.
Just decide to track. There is absolutely nothing
wrong with you lying on your bed and praising God.
When I wake up every morning before I get out of bed, I start
to sing and praise God while I'm in bed.
I do that when I get into my study, but I give Him a good
dose of my praise before I even get up and go to the bathroom
and then to my study to study the word of God and do some
serious praying. We should be praising God If we
can do that on our beds, how much more are we together and
their people here used to help us to connect with God.
Are you hearing me? Is that?
Let me just moving on. May the praise of God be in
their mouths and a double edged sword in their hands.
Why? To inflict vengeance on the
nations and punishments on the people.
To bind their kings with fetters and nobles with shackles of
iron. To carry out the sentence
written against him. This is the glory of all his
Saints. Praise the Lord.
You see, when the church begins to praise God like the scripture
says, it's like God can actually bind demonic powers.
And I believe that the more praise that ascends, the more
damage is inflicted upon the enemy.
If all Anna and I pray this regularly when we pray together
in the morning that the church would just praise God and
worship God like the scripture says so that the church and the
nation, the whole nation can be. If if all the churches today
meeting in this country, we're to praise God just like this old
covenant part today. Do you know what would be
released in this nation? The bondage set, people set free
from this binding, these fetters that hold the people down, drug
addiction, all the stuff that goes on starts to break off.
That's what revival brings. I remember reading of these
Hiberdean revival on the Isle of Lewis.
Men were underground, big tough mints, black with coal working
underground, and the people were out there praising God.
Just a few. No, they didn't even go into the
mines, but these miners would come out of the mines and fall
on their knees in repentance. Not a soul, nobody preaching
nothing. Why?
Because God was revival had come.
God was breaking the fetters when the church, if you and I
could come to church on Sunday to the church meeting with a
heart like this, you don't know what will be happening in this
area and have just spread and spread and spread.
We don't have to wait for the whole church to do it.
Let's be the part of the church that will do it now, next
Sunday. You'll come with a different
heart, with a different aspect, understanding of what God wants
done in amongst these people. All right, well, we can't.
Psalm 150 is another one. If you're making a note, I won't
read it to you. One Corinthians, Chapter 11,
reading from verse 1 all the way through to chapter 14, verse 40.
All of those things are what happens in a meeting, how you
break bread, etcetera, etcetera, which are things I'd hope I
could cover. But all of those things are what
God wants to happen. Gifts of the Spirit.
I'm hoping we can get to that. All right, so that there are
other scriptures I'd like to have given you, but I'm going to
leave it. Well, maybe I can just say make
a note of Ephesians chapter 5 as well, please, verses 15 to 20.
So we're looking not only at Old Testament scriptures, but New
Testament Scriptures and then also Colossians chapter 3,
verses 16 and 17. So now let's get back to why do
we attend church, whatever happens here on a Sunday, And
those leaders need to hear that. We need to hear that whatever
happens here on a Sunday must have global.
Ramifications Global. Global means more than in our
meeting. Global means more than Adelaide
and more than Australia. It means the whole globe.
So what takes place here? When we look at what can, what
the church should be doing, we can see we can have global
ramifications. You know Jesus when he walked
this earth, the 3 1/2 years that he equipped his disciples, Jesus
never stayed in one place for long.
He just moved around all over the place, city to city, village
to village. Sometimes he was out on the on
the next to the sea. Other times he was in the hills
or the mountains. Do a global ramific.
Jesus was never just saying it's all about my little community.
I don't understand how people can call themselves community
churches. Christ Church is more than a
community, the community. But the problem is that we may
be in a church that doesn't call themselves Community Church, but
we may have a community mind. It's no bigger than that, you
know, Jesus said this as the Father has sent me.
I was in heaven. I left where I was comfortable.
Can you imagine being Jesus, fellowshipping with the Father,
that intimacy, fellowshipping with the Holy Spirit, having all
the angels worship him, glorify him all the time.
And he left it as the Father has sent me.
So send are you. So Dudley, I didn't save you to
stay where you live. I saved you to send you wherever
I want to. Now it may only be down the
road, but it may be overseas. And if we and I don't catch
that, if we come with, I'm now 80 or 90 years old, I can't go
anymore. I'm I'm out of that one.
You've missed what God's about because even if you don't get to
go there, you can change the world globally.
If we come to the meetings, you see God's it's got to be the
meeting. God's not going to change the
world by Dudley sitting at home praying 24 hours a day.
If he was the monasteries would have changed the world long ago
where the monks cut themselves off from everything, lock
themselves away and they say they praying and nothing's
changing. It's the church through the
church, not through Dudley, not through Justin, not through
whatever your name is on your own, through us, the church.
So I hope you catch this is part of the reason why God wants the
church to meet. We haven't even got to the first
point really at the but God's intention was to go, never to
gather, to gather, yes, but never with the intention of just
that's where it ends. God's intention was to give, not
to just gain hold on to get. So when you come to a meeting,
I'm not talking just about finances.
Now, when you come to a meeting, are you coming to just get or
you coming to give? It's global.
All right, let me see if I can give you one or two of those.
Why do we attend church? I'm going to give you some
reasons. Now if you had your Bibles or we
won't read this now, but Acts chapter 2 verses 42 to 47 where
it talks about how why they get what they did when they gathered
together who had all things in common, etcetera.
But it seems they devoted themselves to the apostles
teaching to to our to fellowship, breaking of bread,
etcetera. But that's probably when they
came together. Acts chapter 4, if you make
actually chapter 4 also, I think it's from about verse 43 to 47,
but also One Corinthians 11 verses 17 to 21, Paul speaks
about when you come together, your meetings do more harm than
good. Why?
Because we don't discern one another, why we should,
etcetera. But I have all these things I'd
love to have spoken about. Look again at One Corinthians
chapter 14, verses 28, verse 20 add to 39.
I'm going to skip a whole lot of this because I can see I'm just
running out of time here. So why do we come to church #1
all of this is found in what I've just said.
That kind of foundation upon we come to encounter Christ.
Now I'm going to ask you none of these.
This is to encourage you, but also to change.
Have I save a mind shift? How many of you sat up this
morning, got up and thought, I've got to get things done
because I want to go to the meeting.
I'm going to encounter Christ this morning.
I know I thank you for putting up your hands, but I'm just
asking you to answer these things in your, in your heart.
So few of God's people say one of the reasons I'm going to meet
him this morning is I'm going to encounter Christ.
That's why I attend meetings. I'm going to encounter him.
When I encounter Christ, my whole life is changed to
encounter Christ, let's listen carefully to me is to encounter
the King ruling and reigning in his Kingdom.
So the church needs to be a Kingdom hearted people and the
more that that church, if our church and so many of us have
been around for so long in Christ that this is so much more
easy for us at this stage than even these larger churches that
have got lots and lots of exciting new believers, which we
want. But if we could just get back to
this thing. We're part of the Kingdom.
We have for the king, not for ourselves.
We have for Jesus, we have that we can encounter him.
We're going to be equipped and enabled, envisioned.
We're going to be embraced by the king of all kings.
We want our church to be a Kingdom church.
I remember when Darren said to me right at the beginning of
that Kingdom life, when I started, we had to change the
name from something else. It was he said, we're going to
call the Kingdom off. I said it's a hard name to live
up to think about it, but that's what it is.
We should be Kingdom hearted people.
Life here should be Kingdom life in every church everywhere.
So do we come with that mindset? That's why God wants this little
white church together on Sunday. That's what I'm going to this
morning, to encounter Christ, to see the King and his Kingdom.
That's the first thing. There's so much I'd like to say
about that. The second thing, how are we
doing today? Time was we finish at 11, don't
we? No, go on, keep going.
No, I won't keep. I'll just maybe I'll finish on
this thing. We come to worship God now,
worship theologically. The theologians try to break up
praise and worship. Praise really has more to do
with his acts, his actions, his deeds.
The things that God does. Worship has more to do with his
attributes. He's who he is, not what he does
so much as who he is, what he is, all those wonderful
attributes. And when I get up in the
morning, before I get up in the morning, I thank him.
I thank him that he's the King of kings, he's the Lord of
Lords, he's the Prince of Peace, he's the lion of the tribe of
Judah. He is Emmanuel, God with us.
He's the alpha, he's the Omega, the beginning and the end.
He's the 1st and the last. And so I go through this loop
and Jesus Godfather, you are Jehovah Jireh, the Lord who
provides, and you provide all my needs through Christ.
You see, I linked the Kingdom, all my needs according to your
riches and glory through Christ Jesus Jehovah, Jehovah the Lord,
my banner and your banner over me is love.
And you so love me and you so love the whole church that you
gave us Jesus Christ, the Son, that whoever believes in him who
will not perish but have everlasting life.
Jelova Shalom, the Lord, our peace and Jesus, you are the
Prince of peace. You made peaceful.
You see, I hope you're getting what I'm trying to say here.
We to worship God for his worthiness.
That word worship is actually a shortened version of the word
worth. Ship what he's worth.
How much is God worth? Before I get out of bed in the
morning, I want God to know I believe you are worth
everything. You worth more than I can give
you. All the praise that I could give
you all day long still would not match your worthiness.
But I praise you. I pray to look.
I just thank God for saving me. I thank God for that little
Presbyterian Church back in Boxburg in South Africa, the
night I went there with the wrong motives to impress Anne's
parents. And God saved my life, changed
me, and he called me and he equipped me and he commissioned
me and he said start this thing that was NCMI around them.
I thank God, God's listening every single day of my life.
I think I've done that for now, 50 something years.
Every day I thank God for you people that we have a little
church so we can go to worship him, meet with God's people.
These are things that you and I need to be thanking God for
before we get out of bed. But how much more when we
actually together, the things we can thank Him for.
When we're singing our songs, are we praising God for his
worthiness or we're singing songs?
If you get the chance to be a musician or you playing that
musical instrument as worship to God, or you're trying to be a
good musician, you know, there's a church back in that relates to
us still in America, that when we first went to America and we
got to know these people, when they first started their church,
we'd been there for a few years before they planted this church.
They used to employ professional musicians, unsaved, to lead in
worship, and I try to say that now they're leading in the
music, there's no worship, and that they don't worship God.
We need to be worshippers, folk. And I'm hoping that I'll get a
chance to carry on with this because I've got about another.
I think about nearly 20 other reasons.
I think it's about 20. I don't want to exaggerate.
May even be more, but I know I can't get through it.
So let's go home today. Can I just ask you in Jesus
name, I implore you, please come next Sunday to the Sunday church
meeting. Not to Sunday church to the
church meeting with some of God's purpose for our meeting
ringing in your heart. And we may do it badly and we
might fell up, you know, like I would want to touch pray.
Part of the reason we come is to pray and say we might pray
badly. But let's even if we don't pray
out aloud, we pray. Don't just leave it to the guy
standing in the front. Pray when the preachers getting
into a little bit of strife in himself or herself battling,
trying to cross, get a hold of how to communicate.
Pray for them, but look at them. They don't know what they're
saying. They've forgotten.
As you get older, you forget more things.
I used to be able to stand up and just quote screams of
scripture. Now I can, I can still quote
dreams of it, but not quite as much.
And and I forget where those verses are in the Bible now 82
years old. You just get older.
You forget it when you see that, pray, Lord help them through
that. If you come in and you send
someone's battling, pray for them.
If they discourage, pray for them, etcetera.
Stand with me, please. I'm just taking too long.
You don't have to stand. I mean, just invitation.
If you sit too long, just gets a little bit hard on parts of the
body. Father, I lift my heart up to
you with your people. We come before the throne of
grace. Thank you that it is a throne of
grace, undeserved, unmerited, unearned, something we can never
pay for. The throne where you sit
enthroned. You have that sceptre in your
hand, that sceptre of righteousness, and to each and
everyone of us today, you're extending it, putting it out
like the king did in the Old Testament, saying you're
accepted. That's throne of grace.
We come and worship you. We acknowledge that you and you
alone are worthy. You're worthy of more than we
can ever give you, Lord, all the praise, all the worship, all the
singing, all our efforts and energies, things that we feel
are exhausting us. You're worth more than that.
Your deeds are absolutely amazing to us that you could
just say let there be. And all of this that we see
around us came into being and you could keep speaking and
upholding the whole entire universe, every star, every
planet, everything that's going on around us, all these things
men have launched into the the universe.
They all upheld by the word of your power.
You are all powerful, all knowing, all wise.
There's nothing you can't do. There's nothing you don't know.
You'll never, ever, ever find a thing that you can't do.
Our problems are small when we bring them to you, and so is a
church. We come before you, asking you.
Break into our midst every time we meet.
Break in and show yourself to be the King of all kings, the Lord
of all Lords. Lord God Almighty, you are the
King of the nations. Nations will bow before you one
day. Every knee is going to one day
bow before Christ, and every tongue is going to confess him
as Lord. And that's all going to be to
the glory of God our Father. We bless you.
I ask your blessing upon these people, God, they, your people,
they the redeemed, they the ones that you saw and you felt we
were worth saving. You shed the blood of your son
Jesus on our behalf and that blood keeps us clean.
That gun blood protects us. We just thank you Lord, it keeps
heaven open and access to you all through Christ.
So your blessing upon our families, those that are still
in Australia and South Africa, bring them back home safely.
Others that are travelling from South Africa back to their homes
around the world keep them safe at every level.
So we ask all these things with Thanksgiving and praise,
acknowledging that you and you alone are worthy.
Amen. Amen.
Thank you, Dudley.
It's amazing. Let's come with faith
expectation to every meeting. Thank you for joining us for
today's message. For more information about The
Way Church, please visit ourwebsite@thewaychurch.com dot
AU. Have a blessed day.